As the summer fashion season in Japan comes to a close  in Japan, so do the styles on the street. Japanese fashion is famous for switching in between self-invented trends really fast, a reputation that’s well-earned. Not everyone has the luxury of spending their days people-watching in Harajuku, so we do our best to keep you up to date on what’s cool on the streets of Japan’s youth fashion capital. The warm weather, numerous festivals and events, and Japanese school holidays make summer the peak season for Tokyo street fashion trends. There are still quite a few warm days left here, but as autumn approaches let’s take a look back at the Top Japanese Street Fashion Trends of Summer 2014.

The fact that a Japanese magazine – or multiple magazines – is promoting a “trend” doesn’t necessarily mean that the trend will ever make it to the street. As mentioned previous, the Japanese street is more than willing to reject top-down fashion “trends” these days.We judge trends by actually looking at what people are wearing on the street every day in Tokyo.

That might sound obvious, but we see plenty of articles (especially on Western blogs) trying to predict or declare Japanese fashion trends based on what they see in Japanese fashion magazines (not to mention those that just make things up). Japanese fashion magazines are, for the most part, in the business of creating content to drive the sale of certain products.